The Mystifying Matter of Mermaids... Tuesday Talk with Helen Hollick

When I was asked to write a prequel novella story for my Sea Witch Voyages, I jumped at the chance, for here was the opportunity to fill in a few gaps left (somewhat gaping) from my Jesamiah Acorn's past life. An opportunity to write the story of how he became a pirate, and how he originally 'met' the eventual love of his life, the white witch, Wise One of Craft, Tiola. (Say it Tee-o-la, not Tee-oh-la.)

I had some restrictions, mainly, the background story of events that are recounted in the first Voyage, Sea Witch: Jesamiah had fled his recently dead father and mother's Virginia plantation because he had finally found the courage to turn on his hateful, bullying half-brother, Phillipe Mereno, who, perhaps justifiably, threatened to see Jesamiah hang if ever he were to see him again. Although, the outburst was as much justified because Mereno had just set fire to Jesamiah's beloved boat, Acorn.

Jesamiah then met up with his father's old friend, Malachius Taylor, and sailed with him aboard the vessel Mermaid. He became a 'man' under the tuition of Dolly, somewhere in the Windward Islands,  and learnt all he knew about sailing, fighting and piracy from Taylor. And that was about it as far as backstory went. I had to make sure that details of continuity matched up. Which, actually, is not easy to do because characters have an annoying habit of wanting to do their own thing and tug you in different directions to the one you had intended - or indeed, originally written. My Jesamiah is no exception to this!

I also had to bring in an element of the supernatural to this novella, and the obvious path to go down, given the boat Jesamiah would be connected with was Mermaid, was to incorporate a mermaid within Jesamiah's timeslip visions of Port Royal, Jamaica, as it had been before it was completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1692.

Mermaid figurehead

Mermaids, an aquatic, usually sea-living, creature half female, half fish. have been a part of fictional tales, worldwide, since early times.  Assyria has the accolade of the first (as far as we know) stories, with the goddess Atargatis, who changed herself into a mermaid for accidentally killing her human shepherd lover. Entities with the tails of fish, but bodies of humans are in Mesopotamian artwork from the Old Babylonian Periods. They are usually mermen, but mermaids occasionally appear. They were regarded as protective figures.

Folklore associates them with floods, shipwrecks and storms, often enticing sailors to their doom, although some stories depict them as the opposite - of rescuing drowning sailors. Alexander the Great's sister, Thessalonike, in Greek legend, became a mermaid of the Aegean sea after her death. She would appear to passing sailors and ask if King Alexander still lived. A positive answer of "He lives, reigns and conquers the world" would result in her disappearing into calm waters. Woe betide a negative response, for she would create a terrible storm and sailors would drown.

Most tales have some element of love between a human and a mermaid. There are also mermen, the male equivalent, although sitings in sailor's yarns of these menfolk are not as common. (Perhaps mermen are shy?)

Greek myth depicts the mermaids as the Sirens, most notably they appear in Homer's Odyssey, although Columbus, during his exploration of the Caribbean states an account of seeing mermaids. Sailing off the coast of Hispaniola in 1493, he reported seeing three "female forms" which "rose high out of the sea, but were not as beautiful as they are represented". The pirate, Blackbeard, apparently ordered his crew to steer away from certain enchanted waters for fear of mermaids, which he had seen for himself and believed wanted to steal his ill-gotten plunder. Mind you, as most pirates of the early 1700s were usually on the wrong side of sober, these were probably drunken sitings of various aquatic mammals, and these reports must be taken with a heavy pinch of salt (or should that be a large dose of rum?)

On the other hand, sightings are still occasionally reported - even today!

Possibly the most well-known mermaid tale, alongside Disney's animation,  is The Little Mermaid Hans Christian Andersen's well-known fairytale (1836). A statue to her is in Copenhagen harbour.

Durham Castle's Norman Chapel, built by Saxon stonemasons circa 1078, shows what is most likely the earliest English mermaid. Some folktales tell of mermaids in British lakes and rivers, while the tale of the Cornish village of Zennor tells of a mermaid listening to the singing of a chorister, Matthew Trewhella. They fell in love, and Matthew joined with her at her home at Pendour Cove, where, on summer nights, they can be heard singing together. The Zennor Church of Saint Senara has a six-hundred-year-old chair decorated with a mermaid carving. 

For myself and my e-book novella, When The Mermaid Sings, I based my idea on The Lorelei Rock, a 132m (433ft) slate rock on the right bank of the River Rhine in the Rhine Gorge at Sankt Goarshausen in Germany. The name "Lorelei" translates as something akin to "murmuring rock", although another theory is that it means "lurking rock" because it was the scene of many accidents - this is a particularly narrow (and busy) part of the river, and I have fond memories of a wonderful river cruise with dear friends that took us past the Lorelei Rock. I became enchanted by the story of Lorelei:

The Lorelei Rock, Rhine Gorge

The beautiful Lore Lay, betrayed by her shepherd sweetheart, was accused of bewitching men and causing their death. Rather than sentence her to die, the bishop sent her to a nunnery. On the way there, escorted by three knights, they passed the Lorelei rock. She pleaded permission to climb it and view the Rhine for one last time... but she falls to her death and the rock still retains an echo of her name and her tears for her lover.

It was that last bit that inspired me. A mermaid figure, grieving for her lost love haunts the young lad, Jesamiah. Did he really see her, or was she nothing more than a figment of his imagination?

Read the story and make up your own mind!

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Throughout childhood, Jesamiah Mereno has suffered the bullying of his elder half-brother. Then, not quite fifteen years old, and on the day they bury their father, Jesamiah hits back. In consequence, he flees his home, changes his name to Jesamiah Acorne, and joins the crew of his father’s seafaring friend, Captain Malachias Taylor, aboard the privateer, Mermaid.

He makes enemies, sees the ghost of his father, wonders who is the Cornish girl he hears in his mind and tries to avoid the beguiling lure of a mermaid.

An early tale of the young Jesamiah Acorne, set in the years before he becomes Captain of the Sea Witch.

TWO EXCERPTS:

Port Royal 1708

The church clock struck the hour of ten. Jesamiah swivelled to look at the steeple standing high atop its whitewashed tower. He felt hairs rise on the back of his neck, his skin crawl cold. There had been no such steeple, tower or church when his ship had dropped anchor. None of these buildings, not one of them.

Then he heard the singing again and swung around sharply, his hand going to the dagger-sheath attached to his belt. She was sitting on the quay, her legs dangling over the edge, her tumble of waist-length golden hair cascading over her shoulders. She had her back to him, sat staring out across the black water as she sang a haunting song of lost love and drowned hope; a song so beautiful he felt his heartache and tears spring to his eyes.

She must have sensed his presence, for she turned her head, her sky-blue eyes staring into his. She stopped singing. A smile crept over her face.

~ You have come back to me! ~ she said, the words sounding in his head.

“No, I…”

Her smile widened. ~ I have been waiting so long for you to come back. ~ She stretched out her arm, palm uppermost, and beckoned him towards her. Her curtain of hair swung aside; she was naked, her rounded breasts as white as alabaster, firm and enticing.

~ Come, make love to me! ~

Entranced, Jesamiah took a step nearer. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.

~ Keep away from her, son. Step aside. ~

Jesamiah swung around. Did a hiss of responding anger come from his lips or hers? No one was there! He turned back to the girl, caught sight of her sliding into the sea. Fearing she had fallen, he darted forward, peered anxiously into the dark water, but all he saw was the shimmer of a silver fish’s tail.

~ Son, trust me, she is not for you. ~

That voice. His father? How could that be?

Jesamiah peered into the shadows. “Who are you? Where are you?”

~ Heed him; he knows what you do not. ~ A different voice, female, young, gentle, with an accent he partially recognised. Where had he heard it before? As if he were a hound questing for an elusive scent, Jesamiah peered into the darkness, swinging his head from left to right, and thought, for the merest second, that he glimpsed a black-haired girl sitting atop a pile of sweet-smelling hay.

“Who are you?” he asked again, bewildered. Was he drunk, perhaps?

later that night, Jesamiah has become embroiled in a duel:

“Maybe he won’t come?” Markham said, setting Jesamiah’s seaman’s chest down on the quay, beside his own. Taylor had offered them both a place in Mermaid’s crew, an offer Jesamiah and Tom had eagerly accepted when Taylor had added, “You could both end up richer privateering with me. With the turn of the tide, we’ll be off after that Spaniard you encountered. I’ve an itch that tells me she might be carrying a few chests of treasure.”

“He will come,” Taylor responded from where he sat atop a barrel watching as Jesamiah opened the chest and brought out the pistol, powder and shot that Halyard Calpin had given him, back in Virginia. “Stannis has too much swagger to stay away,” he added, spitting a gob of chewed tobacco into the black sea behind his perch. “He and your father hated each other’s guts.”

“I take after my father for something, then,” Jesamiah answered while loading the pistol.

Taylor laughed as he reached forward to pat Jesamiah’s shoulder. “You are the image of him, lad. You’re handsome enough to soon be taking after your pa where the women are concerned as well, I reckon!”

Crimson flushed Jesamiah’s face. He had not yet discovered the delights of the female sex, a fact that was beginning to become slightly embarrassing.

Noticing, Taylor guffawed louder, and then sobered rapidly as Stannis, accompanied by two of his stalwart cronies, strode onto the quay. Taylor slid from the barrel and sauntered in front of Jesamiah to form a protective stance.

“I am not keen on losing any of my crew,” he said, folding his arms. “What say you, Stannis, to a handshake and we forget this nonsense?”

Stannis removed his hat, flicked an imagined speck of dust from the crown and replaced it. “I don’t give a gnat’s fart about your crew, Taylor. If the squit in question thinks it’s too dark to shoot straight I’ll accommodate killin’ ’im at dawn.”

Jesamiah clicked the hammer to half-cock and politely, but firmly, pushed Malachias Taylor aside. “There’s more than enough light for me to see your fat lardy-bulk, Stannis.”

“You do both know that Good Queen Bess, may she rest in peace, made duelling an offence back in fifteen hundred-and-something?” Tom Markham stated, ushering a few overeager onlookers to stand back.

“Did she now?” Jesamiah answered, stepping forward to take up position, his pistol by his thigh, pointing downward. “Pity she’s not here to remind us of it, then, isn’t it? Is this far enough of a distance, Stannis? Or do you wish to move forward a pace or two to see better?”

Stannis grunted, made no reply. Two pistols dangled from ribbons suspended around his neck; he untied one, inspected the weapon to ensure it was correctly primed and loaded, sniffed disdainfully, and shifting his stance so that he stood at an angle to Jesamiah, raised the weapon.

“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” Jesamiah said, also moving to imitate his opponent’s pose.

“On my count of three, you may both fire,” Taylor said, ensuring he stood well back. Several other onlookers took his cue and shuffled aside. “Cock your weapons.”

With his thumb, Stannis clicked the hammer home, pointed the pistol straight at Jesamiah’s heart.

Jesamiah raised his own weapon.

“One,” Taylor counted.

Jesamiah clicked his pistol hammer home.

“Two.”

There came a loud splash from the water below the quay; distracted, Jesamiah turned his head towards the sound and was sure, in that split fraction of a second, that he saw the silver sparkle of a fish’s tail. A sparkle that was dimmed by the flash of gunpowder and the flare of flame and smoke as Stannis fired.

 

***

Was it just a fish that had distracted Jesamiah? Or something else...?

© Helen Hollick

buy from Amazon

Sea Witch (new edition published by Penmore Press)

When The Mermaid Sings (e-book published by SilverWood Books)